Doctors’ death anxiety produces diagnostic bias along cultural-religious lines.

Evidence

When non-Muslim American medical students reminded of their own death inspected identical emergency room admittance forms for a Muslim or Christian patient complaining of chest pain, they gave more serious cardiac risk estimates for a Christian and less serious estimates for a Muslim, suggesting that diagnostic biases could result if health care providers use their cultural identification to manage their own death anxiety. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 766

Categorization

• SHARE: A striking empirical finding worth sending to anyone in healthcare or medical ethics.
• QUESTION: Would similar physician-mortality findings replicate with other patient groups and clinical settings?